At Odds
by finem
Summary: I still saw him from time to time, peering out through Sora's eyes. He was nothing, nobody...so why was he still there? Post KH2. A short piece exploring how Roxas might view Sora’s actions towards the Organization. Riku’s POV


**Standard Disclaimer: **Some day I hope to come up with characters of my own that will be as loveable and awesome, but Sora, Roxas, and the rest of the KH gang belong to ppl who have already paid their dues. (translation: not mine)

**Notes:** This is the beta'd and revised version of this story. Special thanks to **ChibiFrubaGirl** and **cheeky doggie **for reviewing this in its original form. I'm glad you both enjoyed!

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At Odds

I still saw him from time to time, peering out through Sora's eyes. He was nothing, nobody…so why was he still there? It hadn't been long since we had made our return to The Islands. Long enough for the questions to die down, but not so long that things felt quite normal for any of us who had been away. It's not the easiest thing to transition from living one battle to the next to Algebra 2 without things feeling a little surreal.

We had all changed in our time away. We had all learned things about ourselves that we never would have guessed, and while some of those things were not necessarily pleasant for all of us, we had all come out stronger for learning them. I was still trying to fully cope with the darkness that I had fallen prey to, the light that had always shone bright in Kairi seemed almost blinding after she had rejoined with Naminé, but then there was Sora. He had become a warrior when I would never have guessed it would be possible; had fought countless battles, faced impossible odds for the sake of saving not only those he cared about, but for people he barely knew. He, beyond either Kairi or me had exploded into something beyond any of our wildest fantasies. So why was it that he alone seemed diminished now that we had returned; he who had fought so hard to get us all home?

It had to be the fault of the nothing peering from his eyes. Naminé had bonded with her other so that Kairi was finally whole again, so why was Roxas being so stubborn? Why couldn't he let Sora have his peace? Oh, he put on a good face. Sometimes I could hardly tell that he wasn't Sora, but there was something hard about his eyes, something cold that had never been in Sora's eyes. He could pass it off with the others. To Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, and our other friends, he was the same old Sora, hyper, and crazy, and silly as he had always been. But I could see the difference when the light would dim in Sora's eyes and his other would be there instead, and I know Kairi could too. What neither of us could understand was why.

He was there again tonight. We were out to dinner with our old friends at the local pizza place that we had always gone to. One moment he was Sora, laughing and joking and arguing over what we would get on our pizza, and the next, his smile seemed to slip and Roxas was behind those impossibly blue eyes. Kairi and I shared a look, but neither of us said anything. We spent the evening laughing with our friends, but the hard edge remained in those eyes.

Afterwards, when we said our goodbyes and headed for home, Kairi stopped me, worry etched into every detail of her face.

"You need to talk to him," she told me. I leveled a look at her that told her that she was wasting her breath. There had never been any question. I'd find out why Roxas was lingering and set his nonexistent ass straight. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, and I saw as a small battle was fought with her need to check on Sora herself and the knowledge that both of us crowding him would only pull his "ok" mask more firmly into place.

"I know he'll talk to you," she said after a time, a sad smile pulling at her lips. "As much as we care for each other, I don't think it's me Roxas will want to see right now." I could see how much it cost her to say that and I reached out to squeeze her hand in an attempt to reassure her.

"I'll find out what's up," I promised. "And I'm sure that once this gets straightened out, you'll be the first person he goes to to explain himself." She just smiled at me, nodded, then turned away heading towards her house. I turned away from her taking a long, slow breath. She was counting on me to not screw this up, so I had to keep my cool and do this right.

I headed towards Sora's house but stopped at the turn off to the docks. I saw him pulling the rope on his small boat and turning it towards the small body of land that was still a haven to us even after everything that had happened. I followed quietly not trying to stop him. Our island would probably be a better place for this conversation anyway. He of course saw me as soon as he docked his boat and sat at the pier waiting while I did the same. He didn't say anything, just watched as I climbed up the pier and sat down beside him.

"Roxas," I said looking across the water as the last colors of sunset faded and the moons light filled the sky. He hummed an acknowledgement and I turned to face him.

"What are you doing?" I asked, unexpected heat coloring my voice. "Everything's over now. No more Kingdom Hearts, no more Organization. Why can't you leave him in peace?"

"Who are you talking about, Riku?" he asked. He hadn't turned to look at me yet, watching the sky darken instead as twilight gave way to night.

"Sora!" I told him. "I'm talking about Sora and the peace he deserves after everything that he had to do; after everything that he went through." He turned his eyes on me then and they seemed the glow in the light of the moon.

"Riku, I'm right here." He said, and I looked at him, doubting myself. The edge was still in his eyes, but they were looking at me as only Sora could; a hint of challenge, a splash of humor, and a world of trust…and I was confused. I tried to speak, but he turned his eyes back to the night and continued.

"Naminé told me back in Twilight Town, but I hadn't understood what she meant then." He said. "She said that I wouldn't disappear once I found my other; that I would finally be whole again." At this he released a gust of humorless laughter. "She was right, y'know. It seems like everyone thinks that it had to be either Sora or Roxas, that once Sora's memories were put back together, everything that was Roxas would vanish as if he had never existed, but what no one gets…what even I'm still trying to fully comprehend, is that in the end, it had to be both. Sora is Roxas' other. Roxas is Sora's other. Those words keep echoing in my head from a voice I can't even put a face to, but all that really means is that we are, and always have been each other." I let out of bark or laughter of my own, grabbing my slightly aching head.

"I'm afraid you've lost me." I said, and he smiled for me, a smile that was pure Sora.

"How do you think I feel? I've spent the last few weeks trying to get that I can effective speak of myself in third-person under two different names." I chuckled at that, but sobered quickly. He wasn't laughing anymore either, and the Sora that I knew and remembered seemed very far away suddenly.

"Why isn't it the same with Kairi?" I asked at length.

"How should I know?" came his dry reply. "I think it has something to do with the fact that the part of her that is Kairi and the part of her that is Naminé are so similar to each other. They share the same pain, the same joys. Roxas and Sora, on the other hand, lived very different lives. They're two parts of me that developed independently, and I guess some things speak more to one than the other at times."

"Then what is it that has been bringing the part of you that was Roxas to the surface so often?" I ask, and he heaves a sigh so deep that it bypasses the depths of his soul and tugs at mine as well.

"There's just a lot to reconcile," he said quietly. "The memories that I have from two of me are sometimes a bit…at odds with each other." Silence fell between us again and we sat for a time listening to the waves and the swirling of water.

"It might help if you talk about it," I ventured when it became apparent that he didn't plan to continue. He heaved another one of those sighs and I waited while he decided if he would take up the offer. I had learned a lot about patience in my time wondering through the darkness, and I would give him as much time as he needed to sort through his feelings. I had no intention of going anywhere until I knew what was bother him. He took a long time mulling it over, but after a while, I guess the need to talk to someone about the things going on in his head won out over whatever feelings were holding him back.

"I remember everything now." He said. "I think that part of me knew that I couldn't deal with this kind of distraction and do what I needed to do back when we were still out there, so I didn't really fully…" he waved his hands searching for the right word to use, "integrate? Merge? Re-combine?—You get what I mean—with my other. Sora didn't know anything about Roxas until the very end, and even then, we…I didn't understand what it all meant." He paused again for a time. I waited.

"Now, it's different. I remember everything from both Sora and Roxas, and now some of the things I did as just Sora–things I was proud of, things that had made me so happy–I see them with new eyes as Roxas." He voice sounded strained, and his eyes were bright with unshed tears as he spoke.

"The Organization, the Nobodies…I ran around destroying them, killing them, banishing them to darkness without a thought in my head of what they were doing and why. I didn't know or care that they were victims of the darkness just as much as the others I was fighting to protect; that they had no choice in their creation and that all they wanted was to find their others; to become whole again. And The Organization…I can't say that I loved all of them, I mean Ax-el," he stammered slightly over the name, "and I had been friends and I was even getting to like some of the others too, but Saïx was just plain creepy, and don't get me started on Larxene and Marluxia…" he trailed off for a bit then, a sad smile gracing his lips as he thought back on memories that I couldn't even try to guess at.

"But they had all been companions at least," he said, "and for a time, we had shared the same goal, the same dream…and the same fear." All traces of the smile fell from his features and it was replaced with a bitter grimace. "And without even thinking, or caring, or trying to understand why they were doing what they were doing, I killed them. Not all of them, no, but enough…and I was happy. I made all of their worst fears a reality, banished them to darkness and oblivion, forgotten as though they had never existed, and I laughed, celebrated." A few tears escaped his control at this and I waited as he fought to hold them back. He laughed ruefully at himself and shook his head.

"I know that in the end, it had to be done. They were destroying other people's lives to get what they wanted but," he turned his gaze to me now, that sad smile back again, begging me to understand, "they weren't all bad. I remember times with them that were almost happy; Axel's cook-outs, Demyx's mini concerts, Luxord's poker nights…and it makes me realize that even if they were Nobodies, they were still people. No one thought we deserved to exist, but dammit, it wasn't our fault! We'd never asked to be torn in half, caught in between existence and nothingness! The Organization was just trying to fix it…they were just trying to survive the only way they knew how…and I'm the reason they didn't."

I didn't know what to say to that. From my perspective, The Organization had been a blight that needed to be stopped; needed to be cleansed. I had never thought of them as anything more, so I couldn't really understand what he was feeling…but I did understand something of guilt. As I watched him struggling with it, tearing himself apart trying to get it under control again, I knew to offer the only thing that I really could. I shifted myself on the pier into a more accommodating position and moved closer to him. I reached out and pulled him carefully into an embrace, leaving my arms loose in case he fought me. The action seemed to be the last blow to break the floodgates he was trying to contain, and he was suddenly clinging to me desperately, sobbing brokenly against my shoulder. It only lasted for about a minute, but I held on until the wave passed and continued holding even after he had calmed.

"I can't tell you that it's alright," I said at length, "because I don't know that it is. I can't tell you that you had no choice because I don't know enough about the circumstances. But what I can tell you is this: you're not alone anymore. You were out there for a long time without us, and you wore your smile for everyone else because you had to, but you're back with us now, and you don't have to always be ok. You don't have to carry the fear and guilt on your own. I'm here for you, Kairi's here for you and—" I was interrupted by a slight snore. I pulled back to look at him and just as I thought, he was sound asleep. That was definitely Sora. He always had a way of stealing the gravity out of otherwise special moments.

I glowered down fondly at my friend and one-time rival. He would be fine. He already knew everything that I was trying to tell him, and if nothing else, I knew that the strength of his heart would bring him through in the end. If my time in the outside had taught me anything, it was to believe in Sora's light. Always. I knew that he would talk to me now, and he knew that I would listen, and though it would take time, he would heal, and life would go on. That being settled in my heart, I smiled down once more at the now drooling face of my sleeping friend. I mussed his hair tenderly, just a little, then shoved him off the pier into the chilly waters below.

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**A/N:** Owatta! This is the revised version of this story, corrected and altered after input from **Lokotei** and **Karalora.** (Thanx guys! You're the best!) I really enjoyed writing this. I'm still relatively new to the world of KH fanfiction, but from the stuff I've seen, we've always got Sora and Roxas as these two separate entities sharing the same body. I'm not a fan of that perspective, so I wrote this the have at least one fic out there that found a way to keep Roxas alive without him needing to rent out a condo in some corner of Sora's brain.

I also to this day am heart-broken over the whole thing with the Organization. I mean for crying out loud! Aside from the part where they were trying to turn perfectly nice people/creatures into Heartless, what was really so bad about them? They just wanted to exist. I'm totally pissed at Sora a little for being so carefree about killing them all…especially since really, they weren't trying to kill him per se…they were just trying to get Roxas back.

Anyway, I enjoyed writing this and I hope someone out there enjoyed reading it. If you're willing to give my ego a little boost, please **Review**. I, of course, love the long detailed ones, but even a short "nice job" will brighten my day.


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